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This rhetorically organized reader, maintains the best features of the earlier editions: lively reading selections supported by helpful apparatus to integrate reading and writing in college composition and reading courses. In working through the text, the student progresses from key aspects of the writing and reading processes to chapters on the essential patterns of writing and then to more rigorous forms of analysis and argument. Each chapter provides diverse and lively prose models suited for discussion, analysis, and imitation.

The Short Prose Reader 13/e

Contents

Thematic Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

On Writing

Jennifer Lee: I Think, Therefore IM

A journalist and author explains how text messaging, Weblogs, and e-mail are changing the ways students write—and driving some teachers to distraction.

John Grisham: How to Write with Style

The best-selling author tells of the various odd jobs and adventures he had on the way to a successful writing career.

William Zinsser: Simplicity

According to this writer-teacher, “clutter is the disease of American writing.” We must, Zinsser declares, simplify.

Amy Tan: Mother Tongue (Mixing Patterns)

Novelist Amy Tan explains how her writing style achieved both passion and simplicity when she learned to value the criticism of her mother, who said after reading her daughter’s novel, “So easy to read.”

Summing Up: Chapter 1

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 2

On Reading

Judith Ortiz Cofer: Volar

A Latina writer recalls how reading helped her overcome her childhood circumstances.

Malcolm X Prison Studies

“Reading had changed forever the course of my life,” writes Malcolm X, who explains movingly how reading is both an activity of love and a tool of power.

Eudora Welty One Writer’s Beginnings(Mixing Patterns)

One of America’s best fiction writers reveals a long-standing love affair—with books! “Long before I wrote stories,” she says,“I listened for stories.”

Anna Quindlen: Turning the Page (Mixing Patterns)

An acclaimed essayist and novelist declares that the future of reading is backlit and bright.

Summing Up: Chapter 2

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 3

Description

Barry Lopez: Apologia

Lopez brings the eye of a naturalist and the soul of a humanist to a driving trip along the western roads of America.

Annie Dillard: In the Jungle

An acclaimed nature writer discovers in the Ecuadorian jungle the depths of experience that can be found in “the middle of nowhere.”

Suzanne Berne: My Ticket to the Disaster (Mixing Patterns)

A novelist evokes a puzzling and emotional visit to the site of the destroyed World Trade towers.

Summing Up: Chapter 3

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 4

Narration

Elizabeth Wong: The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl

In a narrative of her youth, a writer remembers her efforts to obtain “a cultural divorce” from the heritage into which she was born.

Langston Hughes: Salvation

One of America’s foremost poets tells of his childhood disillusionment as he struggled desperately to see Jesus.

Andrew Lam Waterloo

This Vietnamese-American short story writer and journalist visits a famous European battlefield, triggering thoughts about hisfamily’s fate.

George Orwell: A Hanging (Mixing Patterns)

The renowned author of Animal Farm and 1984 discovers how precious human life is as he tells of witnessing an execution in Burma. “It is curious,” he recalls, “but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man.”

Summing Up: Chapter 4

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 5

Process Analysis

Mark A. Shiffrin and Avi Silberschatz: Thumbs on the Wheel

The writers have a number of ideas to prevent a major problem on the road: using a cellphone while driving.

Nora Ephron: How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps

A popular essayist, novelist, and screenwriter offers a hilarious spoof on our preoccupation with terrorism and terrorists.

Ernest Hemingway: Camping Out

Avoiding insects. Getting a good rest. Cooking trout just right. This essay can make anyone’s next camping trip a success.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: In the Kitchen (Mixing Patterns)

A prolific writer and winner of a 1989 National Book Award explores the politics of the hairdo by recalling his experiences as a child in his mother’s home beauty parlor.

Summing Up: Chapter 5

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 6

Illustration

Brent Staples: Night Walker

An avid “night walker” explains how his seemingly innocent habit has turned him into “an accomplice in tyranny.”

Barbara Ehrenreich: What I’ve Learned from Men

The feminist social critic discovers that there is something useful to be learned from men after all: how to be tough.

Eleanor Bader: Homeless on Campus

“Advocates for the homeless report countless examples of students sleeping in their cars and sneaking into a school gym to shower and change clothes.”

Globalization, Diamond claims, is nothing new: Early farmers carried their genes, foods, technologies, cultures, and languages around the world.

Summing Up: Chapter 6

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 7

Comparison and Contrast

Rachel Carson: A Fable for Tomorrow

One of America’s most celebrated naturalists warns us of the future in a grim contrast between a flourishing environment and a destroyed landscape plagued by a mysterious curse.

Dave Barry: Punch and Judy

The newspaper humorist takes a close look at the war of the sexes and isn’t quite sure which side he should be on.

Michele Ingrassia: The Body of the Beholder

This writer focuses on a study that discovered why white girls dislike their bodies, but black girls are proud of theirs.”

Deborah Tannen: Mom's Unforgiving Mirror

A prominent professor of linguistics who frequently writes on gender issues reflects on the reasons her mother constantly focuses on her daughter’s slight imperfections.

Summing Up: Chapter 7

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 8

Cause-and-Effect Analysis

Stephen King: Why We Crave Horror Movies

The acknowledged master of horror shares his thoughts on why people love to be frightened.

Elie Wiesel: The America I Love

Holocaust survivor, author, and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Elie Wiesel explains what prompted him to become an American citizen more than forty years ago and how he feels about his adopted country today.

Bob Herbert: Tweet Less, Kiss More (Mixing Patterns)

A columnist asks why we are so obsessed with our e-mail, cellphones, Kindles, and iPads.

Katha Pollitt: Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls (Mixing Patterns)

This well-known feminist analyzes the disconnect between the two sexes.

Summing Up: Chapter 8

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 9

Classification

Akbar Ahmed Mystics, Modernists, and Literalists

Ahmed believes that we cannot understand the Muslim people until we understand these classifications and what they mean for the members of each group.

Jedediah Purdy: Shades of Green

A law professor takes a critical look at “several environmentalisms.”

Amy Rashap: The American Dream for Sale: Ethnic Images in Magazines

This writer claims that advertisements and other images in American magazines classify ethnic groups on the basis of prevailing stereotypes.

James T. Baker: How Do We Find the Student in a World of Academic Gymnasts and Worker Ants? (Mixing Patterns)

This gently satirical essay introduces a dozen student types that everyone knows and loves—among others, the performer, the jock, the lost soul, the worker ant, and finally, the student.

Summing Up: Chapter 9

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 10

Definition

Dagoberto Gilb: Pride

The popular Chicano writer takes a poetic approach to explaining how a common but complicated human emotion manifests itself in the deserts of Texas.

Thomas L. Friedman: Generation Q

Celebrated New York Times contributor and best-selling author Thomas Friedman takes pride in the current generation of college students.

Karen Armstrong: Fundamentalism Is Here to Stay (Mixing Patterns)

Fundamentalism, declares this acclaimed writer on religion, is “essentially a revolt against modern secular society.”

Gloria Naylor: A Word’s Meaning (Mixing Patterns)

Novelist and short fiction writer Gloria Naylor asserts that the meaning of a word goes beyond the dictionary—especially when it is the N-word.

Summing Up: Chapter 10

From Seeing to Writing

Chapter 11

Argumentation and Persuasion

Arguments Pro and Con: Friend or Foe?

John Lemuel: Why I Registered on Facebook

A college professor fights his own inhibitions and joins the popular online social networking site.

Ryan Singel: Facebook's Gone Rogue; It's Time for an Open Alternative

A full-time blogger complains about Facebook’s betrayal of itsmembers.

John Edgar Wideman: The Seat Not taken

Manuel Muñoz: Leave Your Name at the Border (Mixing Patterns)

This short story writer argues that different people and groups respond to his name—and the author himself—from clashing perspectives

Richard Rodriguez: The Great Wall of America (Mixing Patterns)

A well-known writer on race and ethnicity argues that protective barriers do not make a nation safe.

Ronald Takaki: The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority

A leading scholar argues that not only is the idea of uniform Asian-American superiority a myth, but a myth that often veils racist sentiment directed at other groups.

Perspectives on Political Rights: Are We Truly Free?

Molly Ivins: Get a Knife, Get a Dog, But Get Rid of Guns

A witty, sharp-tongued columnist and political critic argues that the Bill of Rights ought not to protect “gun nuts.”

Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have a Dream

In one of the great pieces of American oratory, King argues logically, emotionally, and ethically for equality of the races.

Susan Cheever: Baby Battle

A well-known novelist and nonfiction writer declares, “There is a war going on in the streets of New York City” between the Stay-at-Home Mothers and their adversaries, the Working Mothers and Women Without Children.